The site, officially launched in Washington on Thursday, presents in graphical form information about the North Korean regime that is transmitted by its state-run news agency, its main party newspaper Rodong Shinmun, South Korea’s Ministry of Unification and academic sources. It allows users to mine through the data on their own, downloading slices of data or whole sets.

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The site is the culmination of years of efforts by Luke Herman, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego who has worked with KEI and other U.S. academics and interest groups to put together comprehensive data on North Korea’s leadership.

In an email interview, Mr. Herman said the database will be useful for researchers, journalists and ordinary people who just want to explore one of the world’s most secretive governments.

“Our database makes it very easy to confirm trends that might only be anecdotal or allows the user to find patterns that may have been missed previously,” he wrote. “And there are a lot of cool things that you can do once you have data. One idea would be to pair it up with other events going on involving the North Korean leadership, say diplomatic talks or belligerent activities, and see if you can find statistically significant patterns.”

Even for casual consumers of North Korea information, Mr. Herman said the database can help provide background on “unfamiliar names in the news.”

Associated Press

Another day in the showcase city. Pyongyang, April 2012 file photo.

To help draw interest to the project, Mr. Herman came up with eight “example findings” that are touted on the NK News site. They include a comparison of Kim Jong Il’s public appearances that are economic-related versus those that are military-related. A similar comparison for new dictator Kim Jong Eun shows he’s made far more military- than economic-related appearances since taking charge after his father’s death last December.

Another demo graphic shows that Kim Jong Eun has surrounded himself with far more security personnel in his public appearances than his father did. And yet another shows how Kim Jong Il disappeared from public view at the beginning of the U.S. war with Iraq in 2003 – presumably because he feared an attack on North Korea next – and again when he had a stroke-like illness in 2008.

“Putting the data together in this form, I think the most surprising thing is just how clear some patterns became, especially given the opaqueness of the North Korean system,” Mr. Herman said. “It’s especially interesting to me because at the end of the day, this is propaganda and most people would think ‘Well, they can just print whatever they want.’ But at the same time, we see this large gap where Kim Jong Il was reported to have a stroke, and a similar gap when we know he was freaked out during the beginning of the Iraq War. The regime didn’t just print articles saying ‘Kim Jong Il visited such and such a place.’”